Chris Nel surfed to survival.
A NEW Zealand man forced to ride out the Samoan tsunami on his surfboard thought he would be "smashed into the jungle" by the surging water.
Hospitality student Chris Nel, from Wellington, was on holiday on the south coast of Savai'i, Western Samoa, when the 8.3-magnitude earthquake struck on Wednesday morning.
"I went out early morning for a surf, then I felt the tremor — you get them all the time in New Zealand, so I didn't really think too much of it—then I went out in the water and caught a few waves."
Mr Nel had been in the water with an Australian man and four other New Zealanders when the first signs of the coming tsunami appeared.
"All of a sudden the water went really weird, it kind of glassed off and got really lumpy, then we started moving really quick, getting sucked out to sea," he said. "It was pretty scary looking back and seeing the reef completely dried up; it looked like a volcanic riverbed, it was just gone."
Mr Nel witnessed a "big-as spurt of water hit the shore".
"I was thinking, 'This is it, we're going to get washed away and smashed into the jungle'. We didn't know what was going on, we thought 'Why is no one coming out to help us?' but it turned out everyone had already been evacuated by that point."
The surfers tried in vain to reach the shore as "trees and all sorts of stuff" started floating past them. They lay on the surfboards as wave surges swept ashore, riding them out and trying not to get smashed.
"After about 35 or 45 minutes of floating around, we managed to time it between a surge to get to land through the reef channel." When he made it to shore, he saw that the surf camp he had been staying at had been destroyed.
"A lot of my stuff got washed out to sea and I found one of my surfboards in the jungle," Mr Nel said.
Initially he had stayed at the beach to help salvage a wrecked boat but left when he heard another tsunami warning.
"Everyone just got out of there. I managed to grab my passport and boardies."
The surfers headed to a village and waited for about five hours until the threat of a second surge had passed.
Days earlier, Mr Nel had been surfing off the south coast of Upolu, an area that was devastated by the tsunami.
Mr Nel left Samoa yesterday, flying back to Wellington wearing the pair of jeans he had managed to find in the jungle.
"We were really, really lucky," Mr Nel said.
"If anyone had caught a wave closer to shore there would have definitely been people who would have died or been severely injured."
